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The Morbihan CCI launches a "startup and nautical tourism" competition to attract startups

As a long-time partner of the Morbihan CCI, ENGIE was obviously going to join the "Startups and nautical tourism" competition launched on 27th November 2017 by the CCI and a number of other institutional and private-sector partners.

Why hold such a competition?

The CCI’s primary mission is to develop business in the local area and create jobs. As part of this mission, they came up with various ways of attracting innovative companies that could help the area grow, and asked themselves what in the local area might interest these companies.

One of Morbihan's strengths lies in its tourist potential, specifically nautical tourism, with 905km of coastline and an internal network of rivers. Nautical tourism has major differentiating potential for the department.

The CCI held an initial competition of this type on the subject of "Startups and Handicaps”; the 2nd edition will take place in 2018. To capitalize on this success and on the area's strengths, the CCI and its partners decided to launch a new competition that will help us attract and incubate national- or international-level companies who want to develop their technologies or innovations in the Morbihan.Future-facing subjects

Four themes have been chosen for this competition, based on the trends that will shape the future in the field of nautical tourism:

Promoting and spreading boating skills, getting and keeping newcomers

Promoting the links between the land and the sea

Enriching users’ experience of nautical tourism by rethinking the customer journey to be more fluid

Making it easier to roll out solutions that are related to or can be adapted to nautical tourism

So the competition’s scope is extremely broad, ranging from service offerings to technological innovations to networking and communication, etc

We all know that an innovation in one area can serve other sectors. As an example that was used during the "Startups and handicap" competition: the universal remote control was originally invented for people with disabilities!

Several major growth opportunities have been identified In the nautical tourism sector. Although the department is the 5th largest in terms of tourism in France, and though tourism generates 13,000 jobs and more than €870 million in economic benefits, the vast majority of tourists don’t partake in practice nautical activities. They deserve to be better known among the general public.And at the same time, the CCI wants to promote general tourism activities among boaters.

The main stages of the competition

It is important to note that this competition was launched thanks to and alongside all of the CCI's partners. CCI is jointly building an innovation ecosystem with them in startup mode, agile and collaborative.

The partners launched the competition on November 27th at the National Sailing School and then at the Paris Boat Show on December 7th, with Thomas Coville, France’s sailor of the year, and Ariane Pehrson, founder of Lyophilisé & Co (both a sailing professional and a young entrepreneur), an innovative company within the oceanside ecosystem. They are both sponsors of the competition.

Companies that want to participate have until January 16th, 2018 tosubmit their applications. Prizes will be awarded on February 15th, 2018 at the Cité de la Voile in Lorient, along with a public vote for the Peoples’ Choice award.

The adventure will have just begun on February 15th since the partners will then begin working on incubating and growing the winning startups in the Morbihan.The prizes, in addition to funding, consist of post-competition support from the various partners: incubation, consulting, hosting in incubators, development of POC.Innovation, the sea and energy in synergy with ENGIE

As a locally-grounded stakeholder in Brittany and elsewhere, ENGIE's strategy is to refocus its activities on the 3Ds (decentralization, digitization and decarbonisation) to meet current and future climate challenges.The sea and marine renewable energies are at the core of this energy revolution. The CCI and ENGIE have been working on this topic for several months, and the competition is a new way for them to work together.

With a new wind farm being developed off Groix, across from Lorient, getting innovative companies that do things sea-related and helping them grow locally is a way of creating value from the local wealth of resources.